May 30, 2013 ? Researchers have found that conditions in the womb can affect kidney development and have serious health implications for the child not only immediately after birth, but decades later.
In a paper published today in The Lancet an international team, including Monash University's Professor John Bertram and the University of Queensland's Professor Wendy Hoy, reviewed existing, peer-reviewed research on kidney health and developmental programming -- the effects of the in utero environment on adult health.
The accumulated evidence linked low birth weight and prematurity -- risk factors for high blood pressure and chronic kidney disease later in life -- with low numbers of the kidney's filtration units or nephrons.
In Australia, around 30 per cent of the adult population has high blood pressure and one in nine has at least one clinical symptom of chronic kidney disease. The incidence of both diseases is significantly higher in Indigenous populations.
Professor Bertram, Head of the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, has been researching nephrons for two decades.
"The kidney is particularly sensitive to life before birth because we stop making nephrons at 36 weeks gestation. So, for a baby born at term, the process of nephron formation is finished and it cannot be restarted," Professor Bertram said.
Humans are born with an average of one million nephrons and lose up to 6000 each year. However, Professor Bertram's research has shown there is a huge variance in nephron number -- from just over 200,000 to around two million. Further, nephron number is positively related to birth weight -- a low birth weight equates to low nephron number and larger babies have a higher nephron number.
Given that low birth weight occurs in 15 per cent of live births worldwide, the study has implications for maternal health and clinical screening processes.
"In terms of maternal health during pregnancy, things like a high fat diet, alcohol consumption, various antibiotics and stress hormones have been shown to have a negative impact on fetal kidney development, although more research needs to be done," Professor Bertram said.
"Further, given the strong associations between birth weight, nephron number and disease later in life, and the fact that a baby's weight is routinely recorded in many countries, we suggest that birth weight should be a parameter that clinicians use to determine how often a patient is screened for kidney function or given a blood pressure test.
"Although a newborn may appear perfect, if their birth weight is low, there may be consequences 40 years down the line. We could be proactive about detecting these diseases in the early stages."
(AP Photo/Matt York) After a particularly ugly TV experience and negative online reviews, the owners of Amy's Baking Co. in Scottsdale, Ariz., allegedly cursed out critics on their Facebook page.
Social media ? Businesses? calm, focused response to posts key to winning back customers, experts say.
Scottsdale, Ariz. ? It was the customer service disaster heard around the Internet.
An Arizona restaurateur, fed up after years of negative online reviews and an embarrassing appearance on a reality television show, allegedly posted a social media rant laced with salty language and angry, uppercase letters that quickly went viral last week, to the delight of people who love a good Internet meltdown.
?
The art of staying cool
No matter how bad the reviews get, experts say businesses need to be willing to admit mistakes and offer discounts to assuage skeptical customers. Still, they acknowledge, the wave of digital feedback can be especially challenging for small businesses with small staffs.
"I AM NOT STUPID ALL OF YOU ARE," read the posting on the Facebook wall of Amy?s Baking Co. in Scottsdale, Ariz. "YOU JUST DO NOT KNOW GOOD FOOD."
It was, to put it kindly, not a best business practice. Add to that an appearance earlier this month on the Fox reality TV show "Kitchen Nightmares" ? where celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay gave up on trying to reform the restaurant after the owners refused to listen to his advice ? and you have a recipe for disaster.
"That?s probably the worst thing that can happen," said Sujan Patel, founder and CEO of Single Grain, a digital marketing agency in San Francisco.
In the evolving world of online marketing, where the power of word of mouth has been wildly amplified by the whims and first impressions of anonymous reviewers posting on dozens of social media websites, online comments, both good and bad, and the reactions they trigger from managers, can make all the difference between higher revenues and empty storefronts.
Hotels, restaurants and other businesses that depend on good customer service reviews have all grappled in recent years with how to respond to online feedback on sites such as Twitter, TripAdvisor, Foursquare, Yelp, Facebook and Instagram, where comments can often be more vitriol than in-person reviews because of the anonymous shield many social media websites provide.
No matter how ugly the reviews get, businesses need to be willing to acknowledge mistakes and offer discounts to lure unhappy customers back, digital marketing experts said.
"In the past, people just sent bad soup back. Well, now they are getting on social media and telling all their friends and friends of friends how bad the soup was and why they should find other places to get soup in the future, so it takes the customer experience to another level," said Tom Garrity of the Garrity Group, a public relations firm in New Mexico.
"The challenge becomes ? how do you respond when someone doesn?t think your food or product is as great as you think it is?"
story continues below
Fighting back ? In Amy and Samy Bouzaglo?s case, the bad reviews were compounded by their reality TV experience. The couple said during a recent episode of "Kitchen Nightmares" that they needed professional guidance after years of battling terrible online reviews. They opened the pizzeria about six years ago.
"Kitchen Nightmares" follows Ramsay as he helps rebuild struggling restaurants. After one bite, he quickly deemed Amy?s Baking Co. a disaster and chided the Bouzaglos for growing increasingly irate over his constructive feedback. Among his many critiques: The store-bought ravioli smelled "weird," a salmon burger was overcooked and a fig pizza was too sweet and arrived on raw dough.
"You need thick skin in this business," Ramsay said before walking out. It was the first time he wasn?t able to save a business, according to the show.
Amy?s Baking Co. temporarily closed last week after the episode aired. A Bouzaglo spokesman said the couple wasn?t available for an interview. The restaurant?s answering machine was full. Emails and Facebook messages were not returned.
A wall post published last week claimed the restaurant?s Facebook, Yelp and Twitter accounts had been hacked, but hundreds of commenters expressed doubt. Social media sites show someone posting as a member of the Bouzaglo family had been insulting customers over negative reviews since at least 2010.
The story bounced across the Internet, generating thousands of comments on Facebook, Yelp and Twitter, and prompting nearly 36,000 people to sign a petition on Change.org that asks the Department of Labor to look into the Bouzaglo?s practice of pocketing their servers? tips.
Although many corporations hire communications experts to respond to every tweet, Facebook message and online review, the wave of digital feedback can be especially challenging for small businesses with small staffs, digital consultants said.
For one thing, there is so much online content to wade through. Roughly 60 percent of all adults get information about local businesses from search engines and entertainment websites such as Yelp or TripAdvisor, according to a 2011 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
"Customer service is a spectator sport now," said Jay Baer, president of Convince & Convert, a social media marketing consultancy in Indiana. "It?s not about making that customer happy on Yelp. That?s the big misunderstanding of Yelp. It?s about the hundreds of thousands of people who are looking on to see how you handle it. It?s those ripples that make social media so important."
In their "Kitchen Nightmares" episode, Amy and Samy Bouzaglo are seen yelling and cursing at customers inquiring about undercooked food or long delays. They blame online bullies.
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Copyright 2013 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Xbox One Raises the Burden of Privacy Safeguards: 5 Questions for Microsoft
Some things you take for granted, like the fact that in Star Trek, there?s a computer that?s always listening, always observing, always standing More??
BEIJING (Reuters) - North Korea is willing to take China's advice and enter into talks, Chinese state television cited an envoy of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as saying, following weeks of tension on the Korean peninsula after the North's latest nuclear test.
However, that prospect seems unlikely as North Korea has repeatedly said it will not abandon nuclear weapons while the United States insists North Korea must take meaningful steps on denuclearization before there can be talks.
The visit to Beijing by Choe Ryong-hae, a top North Korean military officer, is the most high-level contact between North Korea and China in about six months.
Ties have been hurt between the two supposed allies by the North's third nuclear test in February, despite China's disapproval, and by China agreeing to U.N. sanctions on the North in response and starting to put a squeeze on North Korean banks.
China was also alarmed by North Korea's threats this year to wage nuclear war on South Korea and the United States in retaliation for the sanctions, fearing any conflict would inevitable have disastrous consequences for China.
Choe told Liu Yunshan, the Chinese Communist Party's fifth-ranked leader, that Kim had sent him to China "to improve, consolidate and develop ties between China and North Korea".
Choe was accompanied by a high-powered delegation on a trip that appeared to be a bid by North Korea to mend frayed relations with its most important economic and diplomatic backer.
"North Korea lauds China's enormous efforts to maintain peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and push for a return to talks and consultations for the problems of the Korean peninsula, and is willing to accept China's suggestion to have talks with all parties," Choe told the Chinese official, according to China's state broadcaster CCTV.
Liu, who is also China's propaganda tsar, told the North Korean envoy that "peace and stability on the Korean peninsula accords with the interests of all countries in the region".
"We hope that all sides uphold the aim of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, maintain peace and stability and the using of dialogue and consultation to resolve problems, take practical steps to ameliorate the tense situation ... to restart six party talks as soon as possible and work hard for long-lasting peace and stability in northeast Asia and on the Korean peninsula."
"CONCENTRATE ON THE ECONOMY"
China has repeatedly urged North Korea to return to the so-called six party talks process, aimed at denuclearization.
The United States and its allies believe the North violated a 2005 aid-for-denuclearization deal by conducting a nuclear test in 2006 and pursuing a uranium enrichment program that would give it a second path to a nuclear weapon in addition to its plutonium-based program.
Six-party aid-for-disarmament talks, involving the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and host China, collapsed in 2008 when the North walked away from the deal.
Repeated attempts by China to get North Korea to embark upon Chinese-style economic reforms and shift attention away from the military and bellicose actions have made little apparent progress.
North Korea's official KCNA news agency said Choe had been taken to a Beijing economic zone, much in the same way China used to take late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to see modern Chinese factories on his swings through the world's second-largest economy.
"North Korea hopes to concentrate on the economy and improve people's livelihoods and is willing to create a peaceful foreign environment," Choe told Liu.
Choe's comments came on the second day of his trip to China. He has also met Wang Jiarui, head of the ruling Chinese Communist Party's International Department, a frequent conduit for communication between the two sides.
Choe is one of the tight coterie of officials around Kim Jong-un, who has been in power for just over a year after succeeding his father, Kim Jong-il.
The envoy is a long-time political administrator and was surprisingly made a vice marshal in the army last year despite having no military background.
(Additional reporting by Langi Chiang; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Research and Markets: China Sourcing Report: Mobile Phones Gives In-depth ... Fort Mills Times Makers of mobile phones in China are not only boosting their production and exports but are also diversifying selections to corner a niche in the brand-sensitive line. They are leveraging the country's status as a major hub for the category, boasting ...
A devastating Oklahoma tornado left a trail of destruction Monday. How and why did the state's vast oil and gas infrastructure emerge seemingly unscathed from the Oklahoma tornado?
By David J. Unger,?Correspondent / May 21, 2013
Residents pass a destroyed car as they walk through a tornado-ravaged neighborhood Tuesday in Moore, Okla. Little damage to the state's expansive oil and gas network from Monday's Oklahoma tornado has been reported.
Charlie Riedel/AP
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Monday's deadly Oklahoma tornado has left relatively intact one of the state's biggest and fastest-growing industries: energy.
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Why It Matters
Energy: Oklahoma is home to a major pipeline hub and ranks 11th in US energy production.
Environment: Above-ground energy infrastructure is vulnerable to extreme weather, making surrounding land vulnerable to spills.?
Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition
A boom in US oil and gas production is underway with drilling?rigs, storage tanks, and pipelines increasingly dotting the country's landscape. Some of the development is taking place in and around so-called "tornado alley," an unofficial swath of much of Oklahoma that spills over into surrounding states most prone to tornadoes.?
This may sound more worrying than it is. While hurricanes routinely disrupt offshore oil and gas production in the Gulf and elsewhere, inland, rigs, pipelines, and tanks are comparably unaffected by extreme weather ? most of the time.?
"I don't see a tornado disrupting our mass oil and gas delivery methods," Otto Lynch, a?civil engineer who serves on the?American Society of Civil Engineers' committee on America?s infrastructure, said in a telephone interview.?"[Pipelines] are typically underground. The substations around the routes are very small, low profile, and very rigid. Unless a tornado hit directly, I don?t see an issue from the mass delivery standpoint."
When it comes to parenting, mice follow their fathers' examples. Male mice with neglectful dads grow up to be less nurturing to their own babies, new research finds.
In the study, researchers found that the sons with less affectionate fathers?gave their own offspring the same treatment, suggesting paternal behavior can be passed from fathers to sons across multiple generations.
In the mammal world, mothers are generally the sole providers ? paternal care is seen in only 5 percent of mammal species. Mothers are known to have a profound impact on their offspring, but less is known about paternal care. [The Animal Kingdom's Most Devoted Dads]
"There are very few animal model systems which we can use to study paternal behavior," said study co-author Catherine Marler, a behavioral neuroendocrinologist at the University of Wisconsin?Madison.
The epigenetic" alterations ? probably contribute.
The nurturing behavior of father mice could provide a model for humans, Marler said. Whereas scientists obviously can't do that same kind of study with people, "there are correlations in humans between parental behavior and the behavior of offspring," she said.
Previous studies in rats and vervet monkeys have shown that the amount of maternal care influences stress levels in the offspring. Marler said she hopes to investigate similar effects of paternal care on stress.
The study was published today (May 21) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter?and Google+.?Follow us @livescience, Facebook?& Google+. Original article on?LiveScience.com.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Ray Manzarek, the legendary keyboardist who founded The Doors in 1965 with fellow UCLA film school alum Jim Morrison, died of cancer Monday at age 74. Manzarek had fought a long battle with bile duct cancer.
"I was deeply saddened to hear about the passing of my friend and bandmate Ray Manzarek today," Doors guitarist Robby Krieger said in a statement. "I'm just glad to have been able to have played Doors songs with him for the last decade. Ray was a huge part of my life and I will always miss him."
Getty Images
The Doors in 1970. From left, drummer John Densmore, guitarist Robby Krieger, keyboardist Ray Manzarek and singer Jim Morrison.
His intricate keyboard playing on songs such as "Light My Fire" made Manzarek a rock legend, and he forever held close the memory of his friend Morrison, defending the singer as a poet, not an out-of-control alcoholic as he was sometimes later portrayed.
"What great company he was," Manzarek told the London Times about Morrison, who died in 1971. "Talk about going to the pub and having a couple of beers with the guy -- Morrison was perfect. He's been haunting me for some 40 years now, and I miss him every day."
The Doors sold more than 100 million albums, and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. "The impact of their meteoric career has resonated far beyond their brief half-decade as a recording and performing entity," the Rock Hall's statement read upon their induction. "Their words and music captured the Sixties zeitgeist with undeniable power."
In addition to "Light My Fire," the band's hits included "L.A. Woman," "People Are Strange," "The End," "Break On Through to the Other Side" and "Hello, I Love You."
Manzarek, a Chicago native, already knew Morrison from UCLA film school when the two famously met on California's Venice Beach in 1965. Morrison reportedly sang some of his original songs to Manzarek, who responded by saying, "Jim, those are the best songs I?ve ever heard... Man, we?ve got to get a band together. We?re going to make a million dollars!?
After Morrison's death in 1971, the band continued to ride waves of fame and a seemingly eternal fascination with the late lead singer. Not all of the revivals were band-approved: In 1991, Kyle MacLachlan portrayed Manzarek and Val Kilmer played Morrison in the controversial Oliver Stone-directed feature film, "The Doors." Manzarek and other members of The Doors famously disliked the Stone film, especially for its portrayal of Morrison as a wild man and heavy drinker. In 2009, when promoting a documentary about the band, "When You're Strange," Manzarek told Billboard magazine the documentary would be " the anti-Oliver Stone."
In 2002, Manzarek and Doors guitarist Robby Krieger formed the Doors of the 21st Century with Cult frontman Ian Astbury. But drummer John Densmore sued over the use of the band name, launching an ugly six-year feud. Manzarek and Krieger performed under other names, eventually settling on Manzarek-Krieger.
Manzarek also produced "Los Angeles," the first LP from iconic punk rock band X, in 1980, and worked with other bands, including Echo & The Bunnymen.
In 1998, he published his autobiography, "Light My Fire: My Life With The Doors." He also wrote two novels, including one, "The Poet in Exile," that explores the urban legend that Morrison never really died. The book's narrator, Roy, is a thinly veiled version of Manzarek himself.
In 2011, Manzarek told M Music & Musicians magazine that he was enjoying a quiet lifestyle. "Meanwhile I?m living up in the Napa Valley, enjoying the gentleman farmer?s life," he said. "My wife and I go to bed early and get up at 6. Who would have imagined going from a rocker to a farmer? It?s a great life."
Manzarek is survived by his wife Dorothy, brothers Rick and James Manczarek, son Pablo Manzarek, daughter-in-law Sharmin and grandchildren Noah, Apollo and Camille. His family asks that in lieu of flowers, fans make a donation in Manzarek's name to the cancer-research organization Stand Up to Cancer.
Music fans and fellow musicians were quick to remember Manzarek. The official Twitter account for the late rocker Ronnie James Dio tweeted, "Our thoughts go out to the family, friends and fans of Ray Manzarek from @TheDoors who passed away today. You are now with Jim and Ronnie!"
Leo Laporte, Andy Ihnatko, Alex Lindsay, Chris Breen, and I talk about Tim Cook testifying to congress, new Macs made in the USA, perhaps a Retina MacBook Air, and more.
May 20, 2013 ? A new measure of the heterogeneity -- the variety of genetic mutations -- of cells within a tumor appears to predict treatment outcomes of patients with the most common type of head and neck cancer. In the May 20 issue of the journal Cancer, investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary describe how their measure was a better predictor of survival than most traditional risk factors in a small group of patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck.
"Our findings will eventually allow better matching of treatments to individual patients, based on this characteristic of their tumors," says Edmund Mroz, PhD, of the MGH Center for Cancer Research, lead author of the Cancer report. "This method of measuring heterogeneity can be applied to most types of cancer, so our work should help researchers determine whether a similar relationship between heterogeneity and outcome occurs in other tumors."
For decades investigators have hypothesized that tumors with a high degree of genetic heterogeneity -- the result of different subgroups of cells undergoing different mutations at different DNA sites -- would be more difficult to treat because particular subgroups might be more likely to survive a particular drug or radiation or to have spread before diagnosis. While recent studies have identified specific genes and proteins that can confer treatment resistance in tumors, there previously has been no way of conveniently measuring tumor heterogeneity.
Working in the laboratory of James Rocco, MD, PhD -- director of the Mass. Eye and Ear /MGH Head and Neck Molecular Oncology Research Laboratory, principal investigator at the MGH Center for Cancer Research and senior author of the Cancer report -- Mroz and his colleagues developed their new measure by analyzing advanced gene sequencing data to produce a value reflecting the genetic diversity within a tumor -- not only the number of genetic mutations but how broadly particular mutations are shared within different subgroups of tumor cells. They first described this measure, called mutant-allele tumor heterogeneity (MATH), in the March 2013 issue of Oral Oncology. But that paper was only able to show that patients with known factors predicting poor outcomes -- including specific mutations in the TP53 gene or a lack of infection with the human papillomavirus (HPV) -- were likely to have higher MATH values.
In the current study, the investigators used MATH to analyze genetic data from the tumors of 74 patients with squamous cell head and neck carcinoma for whom they had complete treatment and outcome information. Not only did they find that higher MATH values were strongly associated with shorter overall survival -- with each unit of increase reflecting a 5 percent increase in the risk of death -- but that relationship was also seen within groups of patients already at risk for poor outcome. For example, among patients with HPV-negative tumors, those with higher MATH values were less likely to survive than those with lower MATH values. Overall, MATH values were more strongly related to outcomes than most previously identified risk factors and improved outcome predictions based on all other risk factors the researchers examined.
The impact of MATH value on outcome appeared strongest among patients treated with chemotherapy, which may reflect a greater likelihood that highly heterogeneous tumors contain treatment-resistant cells, Mroz says. He also notes that what reduces the chance of survival appears to be the subgroups of cells with different mutations within a tumor, not the process of mutation itself. "If all the tumor cells have gone through the same series of mutations, a single treatment might still be able to kill all of them. But if there are subgroups with different sets of mutations, one subgroup might be resistant to one type of treatment, while another subgroup might resist a different therapy."
In addition to combining MATH values with clinical characteristics to better predict a patient's chance of successful treatment, Mroz notes that MATH could someday help determine treatment choice -- directing the use of more aggressive therapies against tumors with higher values, while allowing patients with lower values to receive less intense standard treatment. While MATH will probably be just as useful at predicting outcomes for other solid tumors, the investigators note, that will need to be shown in future studies.
"Our results have important implications for the future of oncology care," says Rocco, the Daniel Miller Associate Professor of Otology and Laryngology at Harvard Medical School. "MATH offers a simple, quantitative way to test hypotheses about intratumor genetic heterogeneity, including the likelihood that targeted therapy will succeed. They also raise important questions about how genetic heterogeneity develops within a tumor and whether heterogeneity can be exploited therapeutically."
Additional co-authors of the Cancer paper are Aaron Tward, MD, PhD, Mass. Eye and Ear; Curtis Pickering, PhD, and Jeffrey Myers, MD, PhD, University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center; and Robert Ferris, MD, PhD, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. The study was supported by National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research grants R01DE022087 and RC2DE020958, National Cancer Institute grant R21CA119591, Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas grant RP100233, and the Bacardi MEEI Biobank Fund. The MGH has filed a patent application for the MATH measure.
Contact: Dr. Detlef Weigel detlef.weigel@tuebingen.mpg.de 49-707-160-11410 Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
An international team of scientists reveals that a unique strain of potato blight they call HERB-1 triggered the Irish potato famine of the mid-19th century
This news release is available in German.
It is the first time scientists have decoded the genome of a plant pathogen and its plant host from dried herbarium samples. This opens up a new area of research to understand how pathogens evolve and how human activity impacts the spread of plant disease.
Phytophthora infestans changed the course of history. Even today, the Irish population has still not recovered to pre-famine levels. "We have finally discovered the identity of the exact strain that caused all this havoc", says Hernn Burbano from the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology.
For research to be published in eLife, a team of molecular biologists from Europe and the US reconstructed the spread of the potato blight pathogen from dried plants. Although these were 170 to 120 years old, they were found to have many intact pieces of DNA.
"Herbaria represent a rich and untapped source from which we can learn a tremendous amount about the historical distribution of plants and their pests - and also about the history of the people who grew these plants," according to Kentaro Yoshida from The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich.
The researchers examined the historical spread of the fungus-like oomycete Phytophthora infestans, known as the Irish potato famine pathogen. A strain called US-1 was long thought to have been the cause of the fatal outbreak. The current study concludes that a strain new to science was responsible. While more closely related to the US-1 strain than to other modern strains, it is unique. "Both strains seem to have separated from each other only years before the first major outbreak in Europe," says Burbano.
The researchers compared the historic samples with modern strains from Europe, Africa and the Americas as well as two closely related Phytophthora species. The scientists were able to estimate with confidence when the various Phytophthora strains diverged from each other during evolutionary time. The HERB-1 strain of Phytophthora infestans likely emerged in the early 1800s and continued its global conquest throughout the 19th century. Only in the twentieth century, after new potato varieties were introduced, was HERB-1 replaced by another Phytophthora infestans strain, US-1.
The scientists found several connections with historic events. The first contact between Europeans and Americans in Mexico in the sixteenth century coincides with a remarkable increase in the genetic diversity of Phytophthora. The social upheaval during that time may have led to a spread of the pathogen from its center of origin in Toluca Valley, Mexico. This in turn would have accelerated its evolution.
The international team came to these conclusions after deciphering the entire genomes of 11 historical samples of Phytophthora infestans from potato leaves collected over more than 50 years. These came from Ireland, the UK, Europe and North America and had been preserved in the herbaria of the Botanical State Collection Munich and the Kew Gardens in London.
"Both herbaria placed a great deal of confidence in our abilities and were very generous in providing the dried plants," said Marco Thines from the Senckenberg Museum and Goethe University in Frankfurt, one of the co-authors of this study. "The degree of DNA preservation in the herbarium samples really surprised us," adds Johannes Krause from the University of Tbingen, another co-author. Because of the remarkable DNA quality and quantity in the herbarium samples, the research team could evaluate the entire genome of Phytophthora infestans and its host, the potato, within just a few weeks.
Crop breeding methods may impact on the evolution of pathogens. This study directly documents the effect of plant breeding on the genetic makeup of a pathogen.
"Perhaps this strain became extinct when the first resistant potato varieties were bred at the beginning of the twentieth century," speculates Yoshida. "What is for certain is that these findings will greatly help us to understand the dynamics of emerging pathogens. This type of work paves the way for the discovery of many more treasures of knowledge hidden in herbaria."
###
Original publication:
Kentaro Yoshida et al.
Herbarium metagenomics reveals the rise and fall of the Phytophthora lineage that triggered the Irish potato famine
eLife, in press, doi 10.7554/elife.00731
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Dr. Detlef Weigel detlef.weigel@tuebingen.mpg.de 49-707-160-11410 Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
An international team of scientists reveals that a unique strain of potato blight they call HERB-1 triggered the Irish potato famine of the mid-19th century
This news release is available in German.
It is the first time scientists have decoded the genome of a plant pathogen and its plant host from dried herbarium samples. This opens up a new area of research to understand how pathogens evolve and how human activity impacts the spread of plant disease.
Phytophthora infestans changed the course of history. Even today, the Irish population has still not recovered to pre-famine levels. "We have finally discovered the identity of the exact strain that caused all this havoc", says Hernn Burbano from the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology.
For research to be published in eLife, a team of molecular biologists from Europe and the US reconstructed the spread of the potato blight pathogen from dried plants. Although these were 170 to 120 years old, they were found to have many intact pieces of DNA.
"Herbaria represent a rich and untapped source from which we can learn a tremendous amount about the historical distribution of plants and their pests - and also about the history of the people who grew these plants," according to Kentaro Yoshida from The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich.
The researchers examined the historical spread of the fungus-like oomycete Phytophthora infestans, known as the Irish potato famine pathogen. A strain called US-1 was long thought to have been the cause of the fatal outbreak. The current study concludes that a strain new to science was responsible. While more closely related to the US-1 strain than to other modern strains, it is unique. "Both strains seem to have separated from each other only years before the first major outbreak in Europe," says Burbano.
The researchers compared the historic samples with modern strains from Europe, Africa and the Americas as well as two closely related Phytophthora species. The scientists were able to estimate with confidence when the various Phytophthora strains diverged from each other during evolutionary time. The HERB-1 strain of Phytophthora infestans likely emerged in the early 1800s and continued its global conquest throughout the 19th century. Only in the twentieth century, after new potato varieties were introduced, was HERB-1 replaced by another Phytophthora infestans strain, US-1.
The scientists found several connections with historic events. The first contact between Europeans and Americans in Mexico in the sixteenth century coincides with a remarkable increase in the genetic diversity of Phytophthora. The social upheaval during that time may have led to a spread of the pathogen from its center of origin in Toluca Valley, Mexico. This in turn would have accelerated its evolution.
The international team came to these conclusions after deciphering the entire genomes of 11 historical samples of Phytophthora infestans from potato leaves collected over more than 50 years. These came from Ireland, the UK, Europe and North America and had been preserved in the herbaria of the Botanical State Collection Munich and the Kew Gardens in London.
"Both herbaria placed a great deal of confidence in our abilities and were very generous in providing the dried plants," said Marco Thines from the Senckenberg Museum and Goethe University in Frankfurt, one of the co-authors of this study. "The degree of DNA preservation in the herbarium samples really surprised us," adds Johannes Krause from the University of Tbingen, another co-author. Because of the remarkable DNA quality and quantity in the herbarium samples, the research team could evaluate the entire genome of Phytophthora infestans and its host, the potato, within just a few weeks.
Crop breeding methods may impact on the evolution of pathogens. This study directly documents the effect of plant breeding on the genetic makeup of a pathogen.
"Perhaps this strain became extinct when the first resistant potato varieties were bred at the beginning of the twentieth century," speculates Yoshida. "What is for certain is that these findings will greatly help us to understand the dynamics of emerging pathogens. This type of work paves the way for the discovery of many more treasures of knowledge hidden in herbaria."
###
Original publication:
Kentaro Yoshida et al.
Herbarium metagenomics reveals the rise and fall of the Phytophthora lineage that triggered the Irish potato famine
eLife, in press, doi 10.7554/elife.00731
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
BEIJING (AP) ? Gunmen wearing North Korean military uniforms beat up the captain of a seized Chinese fishing boat and stole its fuel during two weeks of captivity, but eventually released the boat and crew Tuesday without the ransom they had demanded, the boat owner said.
The incident was the latest irritant in relations between North Korea and a Chinese government increasingly frustrated with its neighboring ally over tests of its nuclear and rocket technologies in defiance of U.N. bans.
Owner Yu Xuejun, who wasn't aboard the boat that was seized May 5 in what he says were Chinese waters, said in an interview that the men were allowed to move around the boat while they were held captive, but they were locked in a room at night. He said the captain suffered an arm injury when he was beaten, but he has since recovered.
After Yu publicized the boat's capture over the weekend, China had demanded that North Korea release the men, though Chinese officials have not said whether they believe the armed captors were operating on their own or under North Korean government authority. One of China's North Korea watchers said border guards were the likely culprits.
No ransom was paid, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a news briefing.
Yu reported the seizure to Chinese authorities, and later began writing about it in his microblog as a deadline for a 600,000 yuan ($100,000) ransom drew near.
His pleas for help and fears that his crew might be mistreated were forwarded thousands of times on the Internet, and a high-ranking Chinese military officer, Maj. Gen. Luo Yuan, wrote on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo of his fury over the detention.
"North Korea has gone too far! Even if you are short of money, you can't grab people across the border and blackmail," wrote Luo, who has more than 300,000 followers.
A similar abduction a year ago of Chinese fishermen by armed North Koreans caused an uproar in China when they were released. Those fishermen said they had been starved and beaten, and some had been stripped of everything but their underwear.
Hong, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, had declined to answer a question Monday about who exactly China believed was behind the boat seizure, but he made clear that Beijing was looking for the North Korean government to secure the release of the boat and crew.
An expert on North Korea at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences in northeast China said he doubted the North Korean government would have had any knowledge of the incident when it happened.
"This incident is purely about a lawless act by the North Korean border police to blackmail our fishermen," said Lu Chao, adding that such things frequently happen to Chinese fishermen working near border waters.
"Sometimes, if the amount they are asking for isn't too high, the boat owner would just pay it," he said. This time, it might be related to spring food shortages, "so they are asking for a huge ransom."
Google (and especially the Google+ team) are keeping very busy. While I/O 2013 may have wrapped up last week, the company's just unveiled a new update for its social network on Android devices. Packing some familiar new photo features (like auto-backup and auto-highlights), the refresh includes even more Snapseed filters and tools. Location sharing can now tap into your circle arrangements, and you'll be able to share geo-locations with specific sets of people. Related hashtags will now function within the app, like we've already seen on the web-based version, while (perhaps predictably) there's now one-tap access to Mountain View's Hangouts app too. Gotta keep 'em all connected, right?
Update: As some trying to downloading the app may have noticed, the update is currently incompatible with recent versions of Android. Google has quickly chimed in that this is simply the result of a slip-up, however, and should be corrected shortly.
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Online marketing researcher eMarketer projects auto industry spending on online advertising will top $5.01 billion this year. And data-driven ad targeting ?in which companies gather, manipulate and repackage information ...
eBay has trotted out an update to its iPhone app that sports a slew of notable changes. First, the app is draped in a redesigned UI that enables users to checkout multiple items at the same time, view larger photos and touts improved last-minute bidding for those hot commodities. The software also tacks on driver's license scanning via the handset's camera for quick registration on the go -- but only in certain states in the US, for now. If you're looking to give it a whirl, you'll need a device that wields iOS 5 or higher in order to get in on the action.
It?s been 17 years since Dolly the sheep was cloned from a mammary cell. And now scientists applied the same technique to make the first embryonic stem cell lines from human skin cells.
Ever since Ian Wilmut, an unassuming embryologist working at the Roslin Institute just outside of Edinburgh stunned the world by cloning the first mammal, Dolly, scientists have been asking ? could humans be cloned in the same way? Putting aside the ethical challenges the question raised, the query turned out to involve more wishful thinking than scientific success. Despite the fact that dozens of other species have been cloned using the technique, called nuclear transfer, human cells have remained stubbornly resistant to the process.
Until now. Shoukhrat Mitalipov, a professor at Oregon Health & Science University and his colleagues report in the journal Cell that they have successfully reprogrammed human skin cells back to their embryonic state. The purpose of the study, however, was not to generate human clones but to produce lines of embryonic stem cells. These can develop into muscle, nerve, or other cells that make up the body?s tissues. The process, he says, took only a few months, a surprisingly short period to reach such an important milestone.
(MORE: Stem Cell Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine)
Nuclear transfer involves inserting a fully developed cell ? in Mitalipov?s study, the cells came from the skin of fetuses ? into the nucleus of an egg, and then manipulating the egg to start dividing, a process that normally only occurs after it has been fertilized by a sperm. After several days, the ball of cells that results contains a blanket of embryonic stem cells endowed with the genetic material of the donor skin cell, which have the ability to generate every cell type from that donor. In Dolly?s case, those cells were allowed to continue developing into an embryo that was then transferred to a ewe to produce a cloned sheep. But Mitalipov says his process with the human cells isn?t designed to generate a human clone, but rather just to create the embryonic stem cells. These could then be manipulated to create heart, nerve or other cells that can repair or treat disease.
?I think this is a really important advance,? says Dieter Egli, an investigator at the New York Stem Cell Foundation and Columbia University. ?I have a very high confidence that versions of this technique will work very well; it?s something that the field has been waiting for.? Egli is among the handful of scientists who have been working to perfect the technique with human cells and in 2011, succeeded in producing human stem cells, but with double the number of chromosomes. In 2004, Woo Suk Hwang, a veterinary scientist at Seoul National University, claimed to have succeeded in achieving the feat, but later admitted to faking the data. Instead of generating embryonic stem cell lines via nuclear transfer, Hwang?s group produced the stem cells from days-old embryos, a technique that had already been established by James Thomson at University of Wisconsin in 1998.
(MORE: Stem Cell Research: The Quest Resumes)
That scandal, as well as ethical concerns about the dangers of encouraging work that could lead to human cloning, dried up interest in getting the process to work with human cells. Then came a breakthrough in 2007, when Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University succeeded in reprogramming adult skin cells back to their embryonic state simply by dousing them in a concoction of four genetic factors and some growth media. That technique for generating embryonic-like stem cells (called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells) bypassed the need for transferring the cells into eggs, as Wilmut had done, and also averted the ethical issues attached to extracting stem cells from embryos as Thomson had done. Plus, the iPS cells had the advantage that patients could generate their own stem cells and potentially grow new cells they might need to treat or avert diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer?s or heart problems.
Except that researchers still couldn?t prove that the heart, nerve, muscle and other cells they made from the iPS cells were exactly like the ones generated from the embryonic stem cells. The gold standard embryonic stem cells still came from embryos themselves, including ones that were made through nuclear transfer.
(MORE: Stem Cell Miracle? New Therapies May Cure Chronic Conditions like Alzheimer?s)
Now that the technique appears to work with human cells, the process could be another source of generating stem cells that may ultimately treat patients, says Mitalipov. His group is especially interested in promoting the technique for treating mitochondrial diseases ? these organelles posses a different set of DNA than that contained in the nucleus of cells, and are responsible for generating the energy needed for cells to function. But because they lie outside of the nucleus, transferring cells from a patient with mitochondrial diseases into a donor egg that has a healthy set of mitochondrial DNA would generate populations of cells that are free of disease.
In order to make the process work, Mitalipov says he modified more than a dozen steps in the process that proved successful with sheep and other species. His group had the advantage of working first with monkey eggs; the knowledge about what stimulated the eggs to start dividing helped him to make the appropriate changes in the human eggs that contributed to his success.
Beginning with high quality eggs that were donated by healthy volunteers was critical, he says. Most previous attempts involved discarded eggs from IVF clinics that may have been of lesser quality and affected their ability to survive the transfer process. From the monkey studies, the team also realized that the process of introducing the donor cell into the egg also required a gentle touch; timing the transfer at the point when the egg was most likely to accept the new genetic material and start dividing was important. Infusing a bit of caffeine into the process also helped. ?Even though nothing we did seems that brand new ? there wasn?t anything that people didn?t try in other species or we haven?t tried with monkey cells ? but the right combination, timing and concentration made the difference,? says Mitalipov.
(MORE: The Stem-Cell Ruling: Scientists Alarmed at ?Step Backward?)
He estimates that about 50% of the success can be attributed to the quality of the eggs while the remaining 50% is related to the optimization of the process. So far, the technique appears to be pretty efficient; from eight eggs, the group generated four embryonic stem cell lines. In the future, Mitalipov anticipates it will be possible to produce a stem cell line from each donated egg. ?We knew the history of failure, that several legitimate labs had tried but couldn?t make it work,? he says. ?I thought we would need about 500 to 1000 eggs to optimize the process and anticipated it would be a long study that would take several years. But in the first experiment we got a blastocyst and within a couple of months we already had an [embryonic] stem cell line. We couldn?t believe it.?
Egli and other stem cell scientists are eager to replicate the process, to test how reliable and robust it is, and hurdles still remain before the technique is standardized. It?s not clear yet, for example, whether the process will work as efficiently with adult, or older cells, and healthy egg donors may not be as available in some parts of the country as they were in Oregon, where the state allows scientists to compensate donors for their eggs, just as IVF clinics do. But the achievement could establish another important source of stem cells that patients can generate to ultimately treat themselves.
In an effort to cut down on the number of alcohol related accidents, the?National Transportation Safety Board wants to lower the legal limit for driving from a 0.08 to 0.05 blood alcohol content in all states. That doesn't mean post-dinner-out driving standards will be more exacting anytime soon, though ? indeed, the fight is just now underway, and from some of the most unlikely of people.
RELATED: Fewer Teens Driving Drunk; Nice Baboons Living Longer
The NTSB's new recommendation is aimed at social drinkers rather than people who drink heavily and often, but the agency still hopes the lower limit will reduce the number of deaths on the road per year. (About a third of all traffic fatalities are from drunk driving.) So, for you, the casual drinker and generally responsible driver,?The New York Times has a breakdown what this means for socializing at dinner time:
Blood-alcohol concentration varies by body weight, gender, stomach contents and other factors, but generally speaking, a 180-pound man could consume four beers or glasses of wine in 90 minutes without reaching the current limit. At a limit of 0.05 percent, he could legally consume only three. A 130-pound woman could probably consume three drinks in 90 minutes and still be legal under the existing standard; if the limit were lowered, she could consume only two.
Of course, the NTSB can't order the state or federal governments to do anything. They can only make recommendations about that one fewer beer. In fact, the recommendation to lower the legal limit isn't even receiving overwhelming support from those who typically campaign againstdrunk driving. "We don't expect any state to go to .05," said Jonathan Adkins, a (very realistic) Governors Highway Safety Association?spokesman. "This recommendation is ludicrous," said Sarah Longwell, the (bottom line-focused) managing director of the American Beverage Institute. Even Mothers Against Drunk Driving ? the lobbying group that won a string of victories in getting the national BAC levels in every state down from around 0.15 to 0.08 in the first place ? isn't crazy about the new idea. They "would not oppose" the change, as the Times puts it, but ultimately the group supports other potential changes. This is the board "trying to focus on a group of people who are more social drinkers, who haven't been targeted in a while," said MADD rep?J.T. Griffin, clearly seeking more widespread efforts on drunk driving.?
RELATED: California Drivers are Twice as Likely to be High Than Drunk
Speaking of which, the more popular changes in the NTSB report are installing?a breathalyzer interlock onto the cars of convicted drunk drivers, which would require them to pass a test before the car would start, or allowing police officers to immediately suspending someone's license when charging someone with drunk driving. So we'll see where the BAC recommendation goes from here and whether states adopt it or not. The U.S., Canada, and Iraq are the only remaining countries that use the 0.08 blood alcohol limit. Most other industrialized countries use the 0.05 limit.?
Amongst the flurry of announcements this morning at BlackBerry Live in Orlando, CEO Thorsten Heins finally made good on an app promise from this past January. Yes, Skype is now available on the Z10. Users that want to make VoIP calls will have to upgrade to the latest iteration of the platform, BB10.1, in order to download the preview from BB World. Additionally, Heins also told attendees that Moog will be bringing its music app, previously exclusive to iOS, to the BB10 platform starting today. So, slowly, but steadily BlackBerry's following through on its vision to make BB10 a robust developer-friendly OS.
The toxin that causes botulism is the most potent that we know of. Eating an amount of toxin just 1000th the weight of a grain of salt can be fatal, which is why so much effort has been put into keeping Clostridium botulinum, which produces the toxin, out of our food.
The Institute of Food Research on the Norwich Research Park has been part of that effort through studying the bacteria and the way they survive, multiply and cause such harm. In new research, IFR scientists have been mining the genome of C. botulinumto uncover new information about the toxin genes.
There are seven distinct, but similar, types of botulinum neurotoxin, produced by different strains of C. botulinumbacteria. Different sub-types of the neurotoxin appear to be associated with different strains of the bacteria. Genetic analysis of these genes will give us information about how they evolved.
Dr Andy Carter, working in Professor Mike Peck's research group, used data generated from sequencing efforts at The Genome Analysis Centre, on the Norwich Research Park. Andy compared the genome sequence of five different C. botulinumstrains, all from the same group and all producing the same sub-type of neurotoxin.
An initial finding was that the five strains were remarkably similar in the area of the genome containing the neurotoxin gene. This suggests that the bacteria picked up the gene cluster in a single event, sometime in the past. Bacteria commonly acquire genes, or gene clusters, from other bacteria through this horizontal gene transfer. It is a way that bacteria have evolved to share 'weapons', such as antibiotic activity or the ability to produce toxins. To find out more about how C. botulinumacquired its own deadly weapon, Andy delved deeper into the genome sequence.
Like fossils of long lost organisms, Andy found, in the same region of the genome, evidence of two other genes for producing two of the other types of neurotoxin. Although these gene fragments are completely non-functional, finding them in the same place in the genome as the functional neurotoxin gene cluster is significant as it suggests that this region of the genome could be a 'hotspot' for gene transfer.
Looking to either side of the neurotoxin gene cluster uncovered more evidence supporting the hotspot idea. When the gene cluster inserted into the C. botulinum genome, it cut in two another gene. This gene is essential for the bacteria to replicate its DNA, so why does destroying it not prove fatal? C. botulinumwas unaffected by this because contained in the segment of imported DNA was another version of the chopped-up gene.
Perhaps this is pointing us to the way C. botulinumfirst picks up its lethal weapon. This should help us prepare against the emergence of new strains, and may even one day help us disarm this deadly foe.
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The research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution Advance.
Thanks to Norwich BioScience Institutes for this article.
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May 14, 2013 ? The commercial application of MEMS, or micro-electro-mechanical systems, will receive a major boost today following the presentation of a brand new way to accurately measure the power requirements and outputs of all existing and future devices. The cheap and easy to apply technique will be presented for the first time today at the TechConnect World Conference 2013 by a research team from Laboratoire national de m?trologie et d'essais (LNE) in France. The researchers believe it will help manufacturers improve product performance, develop new functionalities, reduce energy consumption of mass production, respond to market demands for miniaturization, and increase reliability of MEMS devices around the world.
MEMS are very small devices that can be used as remotely powered sensors to measure variations in the physical environment such as changes in force, light, or motion, or conversely as actuators that convert changes in energy back into motion. They generally range in size from 20 micrometres (20 millionths of a metre) to a millimetre and made up of components that interact with the outside environment such as microsensors, and a central unit that processes data allowing MEMS to make decisions based on the information they receive.
Today's applications are hugely varied but include:
As accelerometers in airbag deployment systems for modern automobiles, detecting the rapid negative acceleration of the vehicle
In inkjet printer heads, reacting to patterns of heat provided by electric current by dispensing tiny droplets of ink at precise locations to form the image on the paper
In smartphones, measuring the rotation of the device to create an intuitive user interface
Despite these niche applications, the commercial growth of MEMS devices since their first development 50 years ago hasn't met expectations. This is partly due to a lack of understanding of the potential power requirements and outputs of these tiny devices. The problem is for many applications of MEMS the mechanical components must be embedded in protective wafer-level packaging. Without a way to access the mechanical system itself without breaking it, it is difficult for developers or customers to understand how to best utilise their product.
To address this issue, Dr Alexandre Bounouh and colleagues at the Laboratoire national de m?trologie et d'essais (LNE) in France, developed a brand new experimental set-up to gain accurate information on mechanical values and properties of any MEMS device through electrical measurement. LNE is one of seven national research centres across Europe that makes up the Metrology for Energy Harvesting Project. The project, funded by the European Commission through the European Metrology Research Programme represents the first co-ordinated international attempt to apply the principles of metrology (measurement science) to energy harvesting products and materials.
Dr Bounouh's technique works by applying a current across the device with a varying frequency and allows you to analyse the harmonic content of the output voltage of the component parts. With some additional calculations the technique electrically determines all the mechanical characteristics of the MEMs device including the damping factor (a negative impact on the amplitude of oscillations), and the frequency that determines the maximum electrical power generation from mechanical vibrations of MEMS transducers.
"It's very easy and quick to make the measurement because all you are doing is connecting your system with two wires, applying a current and sampling the output signal," says Dr Bounouh. "This method doesn't require any big investment but still delivers very precise knowledge of the parameters and limits in the performance of your device and could easily be scaled up to measure large scale energy harvesting technologies across the microscopic and macroscopic scales" .
Since its development, several MEMS devices have been tested at LNE using the technique and their mechanical resonant frequencies have been measured with only a tiny uncertainty. In future Dr Bounouh and his colleagues believe the technique can be used to provide feedback on production methods that will allow manufacturers to design MEMS to the needs of each particular system they operate in. More accurate knowledge of the product output and energy requirements will also affect the choice of device from potential consumers who will now be able to select only those with optimised performance for their particular sector.
"Our accurate and traceable technique could be implemented for on-line production tests and measurements," adds Dr Bounouh. "This could deliver key competitive edge to EU companies and support large-scale manufacturing excellence by introducing metrological principles into industrial processes."
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? A truck bombing Monday killed three coalition service members in southern Afghanistan, NATO said in a statement. A local official said the attack targeted a base operated by troops from Georgia.
Omer Zawak, spokesman for the governor of the southern Helmand province, said the truck bomb exploded at the entrance to the Georgian outpost in the Musa Qala district of the province, one of the most volatile regions of Afghanistan.
The deaths brought the number of soldiers from the former Soviet republic of Georgia killed in Afghanistan to 22. Georgia has about 1,600 troops in Afghanistan, the largest non-NATO contingent there. Georgian soldiers are under NATO's command.
Also in southern Afghanistan Monday, a roadside bomb ripped through a bus, killing 10 civilians, most of them women and children, officials said.
Kandahar province's police chief Gen. Abdul Raziq said the blast wounded another 12 people in Maroof district, roughly 60 kilometers (36 miles) northeast of Kandahar city.
Insurgents plant landmines and roadside bombs in the south and the east of the country to target Afghan and international troops, but civilians often are killed or injured as a result.
A Taliban spokesman said Monday that the four remaining Turkish nationals among a group of 11 people abducted last month by the militant group would be released soon.
An email statement from Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahed said the earlier release of another four Turks was intended as a "goodwill gesture" and the remaining four Turks still in their possession would also be freed shortly.
He did not make any reference to the Afghan translator and two pilots ? one from Russia and one from Kyrgyzstan ? who were captured along with the eight Turks when bad weather forced their helicopter to make an emergency landing in of eastern Afghanistan's Logar province, a Taliban stronghold, on April 21.
On Sunday, Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency said the freed Turks were taken to the Turkish Embassy in Kabul.
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Associated Press writer Mir Wais Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.
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Public release date: 21-May-2013
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